by John Marsden
‘Come on,’ Homer said, stumbling up behind me and giving me a prod in the back, not very sympathetically. I think he was too tired himself to be sympathetic.
I came on and climbed over the log, which wasn’t even a big one, and kept going.
It was another half-hour before we hit the cliffs. I’d got to the point where I was convinced that we’d missed them, even though that was geographically impossible. But I hadn’t realised how slowly we’d been travelling. I greeted the cliff like an old friend, leaning against it for a moment, feeling the cool stone on my cheek. Then I slowly, wearily, stood again, like an old lady, and pushed on. It was hard going still, as in a lot of places the trees grew right to the face of the cliff. But at least we knew we were on track for a definite target; the knowledge gave us some sense of purpose, even though there mightn’t be anyone at the end of the journey.
At about 1 am we came to the old white tree, gleaming like a ghost in the thin moonlight There was no one there. I sat on one side of it, leaning against it; Homer sat on the other side. We didn’t say a word, just waited.
Chapter Ten
There was a hint of light in the eastern sky. Or was it my imagination? I’d looked for dawn so many times already, but with no satisfaction. Homer was asleep on my left, mouth open, snoring slightly. My eyes felt heavy and dull; as though they would look glazed and opaque to anyone staring into them. Luckily no one was staring into them. I looked around listlessly. A faint breeze tickled the leaves of the trees, made them move and whisper and play around. In the bush ahead of me a branch cracked and fell. It sounded surprisingly loud, though I didn’t hear it hit the ground. A large bird, a white owl I think, flapped across the top of the cliff.
Then came the unmistakable sound of human footsteps. Only a cow sounds as heavy and purposeful as a human, and there wouldn’t be cows in this dense bush. I felt sick with fear and hope. I grabbed Homer by the shoulder. As he stirred into life, I leant over further and clamped my hand on his mouth. He gurgled a bit, then, as I could tell by the sudden tenseness of his body, he woke.
We both sat there waiting, paralysed. We couldn’t move without making a lot of noise. And the footsteps kept coming. They were accelerating. I stood, crouching, to be ready. I could see a figure weaving through the trees. It was Fi. I held out my arms but she didn’t even look at me. ‘They’re following me,’ she said.
There was a horrible sick pause, then Homer asked quickly, ‘How many?’
‘I don’t know. It might only be one. I’m sorry.’ We turned our ears back to the bush and immediately heard the footsteps, lighter than Fi’s, less certain, less purposeful.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Fi again. ‘I’ve been trying for ages.’ Her voice sounded thick and dead, with no emotion. She was all in. I squeezed her arm, quickly. Homer had picked up a hunk of wood. I wished now that he had his sawn-off shotgun. I looked around for a weapon. There weren’t a lot of choices. I got a rock, about the size of a baseball, and gave it to Fi, but I don’t think she registered what it was for. She just held it loosely, without lifting her arm. I got myself a rock too. None of us was sure what to do; we were just acting instinctively, but instinctively we looked for weapons. We could have scattered and run, but with the cliff behind us and thick bush in front, there weren’t many options. And one look at Fi made it clear we’d have to stand and fight. She was leaning against the tree, the one we would be using as our ladder back up to Hell. Fi’s head was down, but she kept holding the rock. As I glanced at her she suddenly retched and vomited. The sound attracted her pursuer: I heard the footsteps accelerate a little. Whoever it was came straight at us now, with more confidence. I looked for Homer but he had vanished, though I could guess which tree he was behind. I ducked behind another one. I saw the shadowy figure of a soldier slipping between the trees, just ten metres from me. Only one soldier; I couldn’t see or hear any others. He had seen Fi and was going straight for her. His rifle was over his shoulder still. It must have been obvious that Fi wasn’t going to give him a fight. And I think he had more on his mind than just capturing her. He moved in quickly, like a fox on a lambing ewe. He wasn’t a big man; a boy really, probably about our age, and with Chris’s slim build. He was hatless and dressed in light uniform, summer gear rather than autumn or winter. He didn’t seem to have anything with him but his rifle. As he went eagerly towards Fi, I came out from my tree and followed him. I felt full of wild terror and still didn’t know what I was going to do; couldn’t believe what I was going to do. I was gripping my rock but I noticed that Fi’s had fallen to the ground. The man was only ten steps from Fi. I was right behind him, but I couldn’t bring myself to act. It was as though I was waiting for something to trigger me off, something to force me to do more than follow him helplessly.
Then he provided the trigger himself. He must have heard me because he suddenly started swinging round, raising his hand as he did so. I saw his eyes starting to widen with terror, and I felt my eyes reflect his. I raised my arm and, as though in a dream, began to bring it down on his head. I had a strange quick memory flash: a horror story I’d been told, about how a murder victim retains the image of his murderer on his retina. To look into a corpse’s eyes was like looking at a photo of its killer. I was bringing my arm down, thinking about that, then realised I wasn’t hitting with enough force and at the last moment struck harder. The soldier got his arm up enough to deflect and soften the blow, but the rock still hit him pretty hard on the side of the head. My arm jarred badly, but luckily I didn’t drop the rock. The man took a swing at me and I ducked, but got a stinging smack on the side of the head, which made me go a bit numb. I saw his dark sweaty face. His eyes looked half closed and I wasn’t sure why, but I thought maybe I’d hurt him more than I’d realised. I poked at his face with the hand holding the rock, but he pushed my hand away. Then there was a rush of feet behind him. For the second or so that we’d been fighting I’d completely forgotten about Homer, amazingly. The man swung around fast and swerved his head away. Homer was taking an almighty swing at him with his branch but missed his head and got him on the shoulder instead. The man staggered at the knees and lost his balance. At that moment I lifted the rock with both hands and brought it down on his head, hard. There was a terrible dull thud, like hitting a tree with the back of an axe. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head, and with a funny little snoring noise he dropped to the ground as though praying: kneeling, with his head bowed. Then he fell to the ground, sideways, and lay there. I gazed at him, horrified, for a moment, before throwing the rock away as though it were contaminated. I ran to Fi and grabbed her by the shoulders. I don’t know what I wanted from her, but I didn’t get it. She just stared into my eyes like she couldn’t remember who I was. Then I realised the man could wake up again at any moment. I shook my head hard, to try to get some sense back into it, and went back to him. Homer had his back turned and his face pressed into a tree, having his own private meeting with the devil. I bent over the soldier, not knowing whether to hope he was dead or hope he was alive. He was alive, breathing very slowly, with deep shuddering groans. There was a long pause between each breath. He sounded terrible. I realised then that it would have been better for us if he was dead, though I was shocked at myself for thinking that. I pulled his rifle off him and threw it a few metres away.
Almost immediately I heard another lot of footsteps coming through the trees, quite brisk and sure. I slid across the ground and grabbed the rifle again, trying to cock it, but it was an automatic one, too complicated to work out. I held it up desperately, as though pointing it at someone would magically protect me. But it was Robyn who was walking towards me, looking as calm as ever – until she saw the weapon.
‘Ellie! Don’t shoot me!’
I lowered it.
‘Where’d you get that thing?’
‘Over there,’ I said, pointing, getting the shakes a bit, but putting the rifle down carefully. Robyn seemed so controlled, and I felt like I was on
the brink of completely losing control.
Robyn lost her smile suddenly; she ran to the soldier and knelt beside him.
‘What happened. Did you shoot him?’
‘Hit him. With a rock. And a branch.’
‘God, I think he’s pretty bad.’
‘He has to die, Robyn,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘If he doesn’t, he’ll get his friends and they’ll come looking for us. And the first thing they’ll do is to climb that tree. They could track us right home, into Hell.’
She didn’t answer, but left the soldier and went to Fi.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
Fi stared at her too for a moment, as she had at me. Then she nodded. I was relieved that she was at least functioning that much again.
‘Has anyone seen Lee?’
‘No,’ Fi said.
I explained how Homer and I had gone back to the firebreak but hadn’t spent time searching the bush for him.
‘I’m rapt to find you,’ Robyn said. ‘It was just a sudden brainwave to come here. If you hadn’t been here ... I don’t know what I would have done. I didn’t have any other ideas.’ She paused for a few seconds, as if thinking of something. Then she took charge.
‘Come on guys,’ she said. ‘You can have your nervous breakdowns later. Like I’m going to have mine, for calling out at the men on the road. But you can’t have them now. I’m not being funny about this. We simply have to keep ourselves together, if we’re going to make it.’
‘What happened back at the camp?’ I asked.
As Robyn was talking we’d gradually moved in together, into a huddle around the unconscious young soldier, who was still lying on the ground, breathing his slow breaths.
‘It was a disaster,’ she said. ‘Fi and I just didn’t get there in time. We’d been lost for nearly an hour. Then we saw them at last, through the trees. We were so close to it. We could actually see the tents. I still can’t believe how it happened. Then this firing suddenly started all around us. It was so loud, like standing in the middle of a whole lot of construction workers with jackhammers. A soldier stood up right in front of us and started firing. We could have taken one step forward and touched him. It’s a miracle he didn’t hear us, hey Fi?’ Fi just nodded, dumbly. Robyn was trying to humour her into talking again but I think she was too physically exhausted, if nothing else.
‘Well,’ Robyn went on, staring at her boots, ‘what can I say? It was horrible, disgusting. Some of the bullets and shells they used were like fireworks; they glowed, they were so bright. And then they chucked in a flare or something. The people ... they were running in different directions. They didn’t know which way to go. It was a massacre. I was backing out fast so I didn’t see much. At least it was so noisy that they couldn’t hear me. Not just the gunfire, but the screams. I don’t know how many people I’ve seen killed today.’ She blinked furiously. Her face seemed to crumble for a moment. Her lips twisted and she put her knuckle to her mouth, struggling to keep control, until gradually she was able to speak again. But all she said was, ‘Anyway, I tried to find Fi, and there was no sign of her.’ She looked at Fi, inviting her to take over. I think she wanted the spotlight off her for a few minutes.
‘I just ran,’ Fi whispered. ‘I’m sorry Robyn. I lost my head and ran. After a while I realised someone was following me. I hoped it was you but it didn’t sound like you. I called out but there was no answer. They kept coming, so I kept running. I tried to lead them away from here and then lose them, but I couldn’t. After a while I crawled under some blackberries and hid. I waited for hours, until finally I thought they must have gone. I hadn’t heard them go but I thought no one could have just sat there waiting in the darkness for all that time. So I came crawling but again. And as soon as I did someone came running at me. I screamed and ran off. I just kept running around the bush. After a while I got so tired. Then I hit the cliffs again. I thought I’d better come here. I hoped there might be someone here. But I’m sorry. I made it so dangerous for you, doing that. I shouldn’t have done that.’
We all made soothing noises: ‘Of course you should’, ‘You did the right thing’, ‘That’s exactly what I would have done’, but I don’t know if it had much effect.
In the middle of all my own mess of emotions I shuddered as I thought of the terrifying night Fi had spent, trying to shake off those footsteps in the dark bush, heading at last for the tree, but not knowing if she would find only the silence of the night there, knowing only that she was too tired to go any further, knowing that when she reached the tree she might have to turn and face her death. This had been a terrible night for all of us, but perhaps for Fi most of all.
That was assuming Lee was OK.
Robyn started speaking again.
‘It’s still pretty dark. What are we going to do? We’ve got Lee missing and this guy unconscious, right at the foot of our ladder back to Hell.’
Homer finally stirred into a little life again. It was an effort for all of us. We were trying to think normally, to talk normally, but the words seemed to come out slowly, like toothpaste slowly squeezed from its tube. ‘We can wait a bit longer,’ he said. ‘Put yourselves in their minds. They’re not going to be wandering round the bush at this hour looking for survivors, or even for one of their own people. Too dangerous for them. And they probably think they got everyone anyway. This guy chasing Fi, he was a one-off I think.’
‘What happens ...’ I said. I had to clear my throat and start again. ‘What happens if after another hour or two this guy is still alive?’
Homer didn’t look at me. Hoarsely he said, ‘What you did to that guy back in Buttercup Lane, the one I shot ...’
‘That was different,’ I said. ‘I did that because he was going to die anyway. It was euthanasia.’
‘Look at this bloke,’ Homer said. ‘He’s not going to live. Or if he does he’ll be a vegetable.’
‘You don’t know that.’ But I tried to explain the real difference. ‘That was in hot blood,’ I said at last. ‘I don’t think I could do it in cold blood.’
One of the things I find strangest and hardest is that we were having such conversations. We should have been talking about discos and electronic mail and exams and bands. How could this have been happening to us? How could we have been huddled in the dark bush, cold and hungry and terrified, talking about who we should kill? We had no preparation for this, no background, no knowledge. We didn’t know if we were doing the right thing, ever. We didn’t know anything. We were just ordinary teenagers, so ordinary we were boring. Overnight they’d pulled the roof off our lives. And after they’d pulled off the roof they’d come in and torn down the curtains, ripped up the furniture, burnt the house and thrown us into the night, where we’d been forced to run and hide and live like wild animals. We had no foundations, and we had no secure walls around our lives any more. We were living in a strange long nightmare, where we had to make our own rules, invent new values, stumble around blindly, hoping we weren’t making too many mistakes. We clung to what we knew and what we thought was right, but all the time those things too were being stripped from us. I didn’t know if we’d be left with nothing, or if we’d be left with a new set of rules and attitudes and behaviours, so that we weren’t able to recognise ourselves any more. We could end up as new, distorted, deformed creatures, with only a few physical resemblances to the people we once were.
Of course, in among all this we had moments – days sometimes – when we acted in ways that were ‘normal’, vaguely like the old days. But it was never the same. Even those moments were warped by what had happened to us, by the horrible new world that we’d been forced into. There seemed no end to it, no clues as to what we would become, nothing. Just day-to-day survival.
Homer had leaned over the young soldier on the ground and was going through his pockets. He gradually accumulated a little pile of items as we watched in silence. It was hard to see details in the dark, but there was a wallet and a
knife and a couple of keys. Then, from a breast pocket, he pulled out a little torch, no bigger than a pen, and switched it on. In its light I saw just how badly hurt the soldier was. There was blood coming out of his ears and nose, and his scalp was matted with blood, so that the hairs of his head were wet and stuck together. I also saw how young he was. He could have been younger than us. His smooth skin looked as if no razor had ever touched it. I had to remind myself urgently, harshly, that he was a potential rapist, a potential killer. At the same time I knew I couldn’t kill him.
‘We could move him a long way off,’ said Robyn doubtfully, ‘so that they wouldn’t connect him with the tree and the cliff.’
‘And if he wakes up?’ I asked. ‘We’re not doctors. We don’t know what might happen.’
‘He’d at least have concussion,’ Robyn said, even more doubtfully. ‘He probably wouldn’t remember where he was or what happened.’
No one bothered to point out all the flaws in the plan.
We sat there quietly watching. After about an hour I began to realise that the young soldier was going to solve the problem for us. I realised that his life was slowly ebbing away. He was dying on the ground in front of us, as we looked on without a word being spoken. We made no move to save him, though I doubt if we could have done much anyway. I felt sad. In the short time we’d been gathered around him I’d come to feel that I knew him, in a strange sort of way. Death seemed so personal, so close, when it came slowly, almost gently, like this. In touching him it touched us all. Every quarter hour or so Homer switched the torch on, but although it was still dark under the trees, we didn’t really need it. I could see each rise and fall of the uniformed chest, could feel each struggle to draw the next breath. I began to hold my own breath as he finished exhaling, willing him to find more air. But gradually each breath became lighter, and the pause between each one longer. A feather resting on his mouth might have fluttered a little as he reached for another moment of life, but the feather would not have lifted at all.